More with Michael Ondaatje

As promised in today's Stars magazine in The Post-Standard. Here's more from my recent telephone interview with Michael Ondaatje:

What writers did you grow up admiring or come to admire maybe when you got to university?

The poets, I guess. It was Yeats and Browning and then Wallace Stevens and ... gradually it was people like William Carlos Williams and Robert Creeley and more contemporary poets. Ted Hughes was just becoming very popular then. I sort of discovered the English poets first and then found the American writers actually much more interesting. So Williams was very, very important to me. And later on, Creeley. So that was very exciting. And then some Canadian writers, too, who I met while a student in Canada.

How does a book tour compare to the solitary act of writing?

Well, it's extreme opposite. When you're writing or mulling something over, you're in a room by yourself for most of the day and that's very pleasurable. You do have to get out in the evenings, out of your cage. So this is a bit different, a bit different spirit, to the other side of writing.

Do you find a great difference between English writing as opposed to American writing as opposed to Canadian writing?

Well, I think Canadian writing is a bit closer to American writing. I find the English writing a bit staid, a bit too cooked, as D.H. Lawrence would say. The cooked and the raw element. And I'm more interested in what American writers have done or what Canadian writers have done. People like Al Purdy in Canada or Phyllis Webb in Canada. These writers were very important to me when I was beginning to write.

Courtesy of Vintage BooksMichael Ondaatje

Were there writers in your family, or did you light out on your own unique path?

Not as far as I knew. I grew up in Sri Lanka and no one wrote as far as I knew. I think about five generations back, someone was writing some medical biology text, on poisons and stuff like that. But that was about it.

Do you know what other profession you might have chosen if this whole writing thing hadn't worked out. Because it's hard to tell from reading your books.

Hmm. I was a teacher for a long time. I did teach for about 15 years. But it was because I didn't know what to do. I enjoyed teaching, and I had great teachers and I think that's what inspired me to go into that profession. And I think it's a great profession. But I don't know what I would have done. I think I might have been a complete failure if I hadn't discovered literature. I'd probably be arrested or robbing some corner store or something. It's a bit of a problem. I sort of worry about this.

You still worry about this?

It was a lucky break. What if I didn't discovery literature?

Would you want to do it again (make a movie adaptation) with one of your books?

I'm not looking forward to it. If it happens, it'll happen. But I sort of like the form of the book. It's something I know. I know the landscape of what happens with a book. With film, it's so much luck. If it comes out at this season or that season or that weekend, you know. ... All these things mean success or failure. It's not quite the same thing.